The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

by John Waters

And when they dined in the evening she did everything possible to show her appetite had improved, and she was tasting every dish and morsel that he tasted. “If there is anybody who is being poisoned here,” she seemed to say, “I am the first to be poison’s victim.”

  ONE DAY WHEN she felt strong enough, when her grief from Gertrude’s death appeared to have dissipated, she dressed in her best tailored outfit, put on a large, almost-never-worn floppy hat, and went directly to lawyer Seaver’s office.

  His secretary, after having apprised the lawyer of who was waiting, had come out and said he could not see her. She walked past the secretary, opened the door and went directly up to the old man’s desk; he, being partially deaf, was unaware for a moment she had entered.

  “I want the will changed,” Alda said.

  “What on earth are you talking about?” he shouted at her.

  “Will you lower your voice, Mr. Seavers?” She spoke as she thought Gertrude might have spoken, except of course Mr. Seavers would never have dared roar at her.

  “No one can change the will of a deceased person,” he cried. “Have you lost what little wits you ever had?”

  “I am aware that Gertrude cannot come back and change her will, Mr. Seavers. But I can certainly give away all she has left me. Except the house which I already owned with her and which was mine on her death.”

  Mr. Seavers put down his pencil and squared his shoulders. He took off his glasses, looked through them and put them back on, and went on scrutinizing Gertrude’s cook.

  “I want to give all the money to my church,” Alda said in a magisterial voice. “And I don’t want any discussion. I’ve thought about it for weeks, and my mind is made up. So much money makes me very unhappy, Mr. Seavers. I won’t have it.”

  He shook his head gravely.

  “What is your church?” he inquired at length in a voice which if not kindly was civil.

  “The Disciples of Christ, sir.”

  “But are you certain, Alda!”

  “I am certain, or I would not be here. Now are you going to take care of it, or shall I go to another lawyer? Give me your decision.”

  Mr. Seavers rose then and cleared his throat. “You have changed, Alda. You have changed. I have known you since you were a mere girl. Yes, you have changed.”

  “It don’t matter whether I have changed or not, Mr. Seavers. I hate that money. I will not be a rich woman. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand being wealthy and have people envy me. I want to be the way I was, and I will be it.”

  “Very well, if that is your positive last word. But why go to another lawyer? To someone who doesn’t know you and never knew Gertrude. Besides, you’d have to go miles to find another. Old man McCready died last week, and he was the only other man practicing law here.”

  “Then you’ll draw up the proper papers, Mr. Seavers?”

  “You can count on it, Alda, of course you can.”

  She stood before him with composed features and almost a haughty angle to her chin. Her gray eyes were for the first time in his memory calm and unafraid.

  EVERYONE IN THAT small community soon learned of Alda Bayliss having given away her fortune to the Disciples of Christ. Sonny was of course included among the number who learned of the event.

  Alda had told him nothing, had not even hinted at such a decision, such a rash and precipitous turnaround.

  “She don’t even go to that church too often, and Gertrude used to have to scold her about her lax attendance,” Sonny told himself.

  He went to Alda’s house early on the evening of the news, around five o’clock to be exact, and knocked rather than ringing Gertrude’s old silver-throated chimes.

  “Come in,” said a composed and firm voice.

  Sonny took off his hat and stood for a moment on the threshold.

  “Close the door, if you please, and don’t let in any more draught than already comes through the cracks and crannies of this old house.”

  “I don’t imagine you will want me to come to supper anymore,” he began, still standing.

  “Why don’t you sit down if you are going to say something,” Alda spoke in her new, though comfortable tone of authority.

  “Will you?” he inquired, sitting down as if the seat of his pants might touch something very hot or very cold.

  “Supper always bored me,” Alda said. “Cooking for her day after day, you know. Especially with me such a light eater.”

  “You’ll go back to the dainty fare then?”

  “I may skip supper altogether,” she said. “Now I am free.”

  “Would you mind explaining that to me, Alda?” Sonny said. “I don’t speak sarcastically. I just don’t understand.”

  “The money she left me maybe wasn’t enough after all,” Alda spoke into her folded hands.

  “Would you mind raising your voice?” Sonny said almost penitently.

  “I said no bequest could be big enough to repay me for all those suppers I cooked for her. If I accepted the money, I would go on forever being her cook right over her grave. No, I am through with being a cook, through with being Gertrude’s heir. I am going to Georgia.”

  “I’m sorry I walked in on you in the bathroom the other day,” he said.

  “Well, maybe that was what made me give up the bequest, I sometimes think. As long as I was her heir, as long as I lived under her bounty, people could do that to me. Walk in on me in my bath and have me cook their supper. No, thank you. No thank you, Gertrude.”

  Sonny stared at her dumbly. She saw the look of both wonder and admiration on his face and flushed under his scrutiny.

  “I am happy, if not at ease, for the first time in my life. Not happy maybe, but relieved. That’s as near happiness or freedom as I can get. I’m not Gertrude’s cook any more. I’m not nobody’s. And I will live on dainty fare from now on.”

  “Soups and salads?” he whispered.

  “And an occasional sandwich . . . I’m through with victuals. Let the church worry about her money.”

  “Would you care for me to come by and do your odd jobs ever, though?” He had risen and was holding his hat by its stained frayed brim.

  She picked up a shiny glossy travel folder.

  She opened its many pages and maps.

  “I’ll tell you,” she began. “I’ve been thinking of selling this place and going to one of these islands off the coast of Georgia.”

  He nodded.

  “They say you can live on next to nothing, and the winters ain’t fierce like here. . . . This house always reminds me too much of cooking,” she added.

  “I have to hand it to you,” Sonny began again, but she stood up all at once. There was no trace in her movements of her recent stiffness.

  ABOUT A MONTH later, towards nightfall, Sonny was eating a warmed-over portion of hunter’s stew composed of wild rabbit and squirrel and some not-too-choice pieces of venison, when he heard the tinkle of the doorbell. He started up because nobody had rung that doorbell in a number of years. His friends, and the hunters, walked right in.

  “It’s you!” he said staring at Alda through the glass partition of the door. “It’s you,” he repeated.

  He did not think to undo the latch and let her in for some seconds. Her appearance was drastically changed, her hair had been cut or shampooed or something, at any rate it looked totally different, and she looked almost younger, certainly thinner, but her face was more wrinkled and drawn. Still, she looked better and more like a woman than he had ever seen her.

  “There was nobody to go to,” she began after he had motioned for her to be seated on the settee.

  He went on eating his stew.

  “Do you want some of my supper?” he inquired when she offered to say no more about the reason for her presence here tonight. “It’s not your kind of grub,” he cautioned her.

  “I might take just about a half of what you have on your plate.”

  He walked out to the kitchen, took a plate off the pantry shelf and served her some hunt
er’s stew.

  He was surprised all over again to see her eat it, almost greedily. “They have turned down my gift,” she told him.

  “Who?” he wondered. Then without waiting for her to reply he said, “I thought you had gone to Georgia to live. You said . . .”

  “I didn’t like it there. But that’s not why I’m back.”

  He looked down at his empty plate.

  “Well,” he said gruffly, turning his attention to her.

  “They turned down my bequest. The Disciples of Christ,” she announced.

  He stared at her with that rather imbecilic expression on his face that had always annoyed both Gertrude and her.

  “You remember I was going to give them . . .”

  “Yeah, yeah, Gertrude’s money,” he finished for her biliously.

  “Well, the preacher and the congregation all voted not to accept it. They felt it would not be appropriate considering the source.”

  “Considering the source!” He was nearly thunderstruck. He rose with his plate and took it out to the kitchen sink and deposited it there. “What source?” he said coming back into the room.

  “Perhaps Gertrude, perhaps me. She was an unbeliever, you know. And they never liked her kind of sculpture, either. They also pointed out I seldom came to church and never worked with the other church members on committees or church business. They have turned down my gift!”

  “So you’re rich all over again,” he said. He had lit his pipe and was engulfing his face and chest in thick smoke.

  “Turning down good money like that,” he mused.

  She began to weep very hard.

  “What was wrong with Georgia?” he asked after a while.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Probably nothing. I am too old to go to a new place but I would have stayed if the Disciples of Christ had kept my money. That was the last straw, their turning down my gift. I feel now like the money is mine.”

  He rose and went to the window and looked out. “That’s some rainstorm coming down,” he noted. “You got here just in time.” He turned around and stared at her. “Like you planned it that way, didn’t you?” He laughed rather hysterically then.

  “I just had to talk to somebody. I had my phone shut off when I went to Georgia so I couldn’t call you.”

  “Well, anyhow, Alda,” Sonny began shyly now, “let me say, welcome home. It was lonesomer than usual with you in Georgia, let me tell you.” He started to move closer to his guest, then stopped abruptly. “I wonder, Alda,” he almost stuttered now, “do you think you could join me in a libation in honor of your homecoming?”

  “And why ever not, Sonny, for goodness gracious sakes?”

  “Well, Gertrude once drew me aside and told me to remember you was brought up never to taste, or allow others in your presence to taste, strong drink.”

  “Gertrude told you that, did she?” Alda mused, scowling deeply. “Well, look here now, Sonny. That maybe was then, understand, but today is a brand-new day so far as I’m concerned.”

  Sonny hurried to a little cabinet and pulled out a tall bottle of French brandy and in a trice took up two glasses and poured each of them one-third full of the deep amber drink. Handing her a glass, Sonny said almost in a whisper, “To long life and happiness . . . and let them church folks go . . . you know where.”

  “Oh, go ahead and swear, Sonny, see if I care.” Alda grinned broadly and took a long taste of the brandy. “To your own good health and long life, Sonny, dear friend.”

  They both smiled comfortably at one another and went on tasting their drinks, and then in the silence that followed they listened with undivided attention to the fury of the storm outside and its pelting the windows in a barrage of sleet and icy rain.

  THE WHITE BLACKBIRD

  Even before I reached my one hundredth birthday, I had made several wills, and yet just before I put down my signature, Delia Mattlock, my hand refused to form the letters. My attorney was in despair. I had outlived everyone, and there was only one person to whom I could bequeath much, my young godson, and he was not yet twenty-one.

  I am putting all this down more to explain the course of events to myself than leave this as a document to posterity, for as I say outside of my godson, Clyde Furness, even my life-long servants have departed this life.

  The reason I could not sign my name then is simply this: piece by piece my family jewels have been disappearing over the last few years, and today as I near my one hundred years all of these precious heirlooms one by one have vanished into thin air.

  I blamed myself at first, for even as a young girl I used to misplace articles to the great sorrow of my mother. My great grandmother���s gold thimble is an example. “You would lose your head if it wasn’t tied on,” Mother would joke rather sourly. I lost my graduation watch, I lost my diamond engagement ring, and if I had not taken the vow never to remove it, my wedding ring to Will Mattlock would have also taken flight. I will never remove it and will go to my grave wearing it.

  But, to return to the jewels. They go back in my family over two hundred years, and yes piece by piece, as I say, they have been disappearing. Take my emerald necklace—its loss nearly finished me. But what of my diamond earrings, the lavaliere over a century old, my ruby earrings—oh why mention them, for to mention them is like a stab in the heart.

  I could tell no one for fear they would think I had lost my wits, and then they would blame the servants, who were I knew blameless—such perfect even holy caretakers of me and mine.

  But there came the day when I felt I must at least hint to my godson, Clyde Furness, that my jewels were all by now unaccounted for. I hesitated weeks, months before telling him.

  About Clyde now. His Uncle Enos told me many times that it was his heartbroken conviction Clyde was somewhat retarded. “Spends all his time in the forest,” Enos went on, “failed every grade in school, couldn’t add up a column of figures or do his multiplication tables.”

  “Utter rot and nonsense,” I told Enos. “Clyde is bright as a silver dollar. I have taught him all he needs to know, and I never had to teach him twice because he has a splendid memory. In fact, Enos, he is becoming my memory.”

  Then of course Enos had to die. Only sixty, went off like a puff of smoke while reading the weekly racing news.

  So then there was only Clyde and me. We played cards, chess, and then one day he caught sight of my old Ouija board.

  I went over to where he was looking at it. That was when I knew I would tell him, of the jewels vanishing of course.

  Who else was there. Yet Clyde is a boy I thought, forgetting he was now twenty, for he looked only fourteen to my eyes.

  “Put the Ouija board down for a while,” I asked him. “I have something to tell you, Clyde.” He sat down and looked at me out of his handsome hazel eyes.

  I think he already knew what I was to say. But I got out the words. “My heirloom jewels, Clyde, have been taken.” My voice sounded far away and more like Uncle Enos’s than mine.

  “All, Delia?” Clyde whispered, staring still sideways at the Ouija board.

  “All, all. One by one over the past three years they have been slipping away. I have almost wondered sometimes if there are spirits, Clyde.”

  He shook his head.

  That was the beginning of even greater closeness between us.

  I had given out, at last, my secret. He had accepted it; we were, I saw, like confederates, though we were innocent of course of wrongdoing ourselves. We shared secretly the wrongdoing of someone else.

  Or was it wrongdoing I wondered. Perhaps the disappearance of the jewels could be understood as the work of some blind power.

  But what kind?

  My grandfather had a great wine cellar. I had never cared for wine, but in the long winter evenings I finally suggested to Clyde we might try one of the cellar wines.

  He did not seem very taken with the idea, for which I was glad, but he obeyed docilely, went down the interminable steps of the cellar and
brought back a dusty bottle.

  It was a red wine.

  We, neither of us, relished it, though I had had it chilled in a bucket of ice, but you see it was the ceremony we both liked. We had to be doing something as we shared the secret.

  There were cards, dominoes, Parcheesi, and finally, alas, the Ouija board, but with which we had no luck at all. It sat wordless and morose under our touch.

  Often as we sat at cards I would blurt out some thoughtless remark, like once I said, “If we only knew what was before us!”

  Either Clyde did not hear, or he pretended I had not spoken.

  There was only one subject between us. The missing jewels. And yet I always felt it was wrong to burden a young man with such a loss. But then I gradually saw that we were close, very close. I realized that he had something for me that could only be called love. Uncle Enos was gone, Clyde had never known either mother or father. I was his all, he was my all. The jewels in the end meant nothing to me. A topic for us—no more.

  I had been the despair of my mother because as she said I cared little for real property, farmlands, mansions, not even dresses. Certainly not jewels.

  “You will be a wealthy woman one day,” mother said, “and yet look at you, you care evidently for nothing this world has to offer.”

  My two husbands must have felt this also. Pouring over their ledgers at night, they would often look up and say, “Delia, you don’t care if the store keeps or not, do you?”

  “You will be a wealthy woman in time, if only by reason of your jewels,” my mother’s words of long ago began to echo in my mind when I no longer had them.

  My real wealth was in Clyde. At times when I would put my hand through his long chestnut hair a shiver would run through his entire body.

  He suffered from a peculiar kind of headache followed by partial deafness and he told me the only thing which helped the pain was when I would pull tightly on his curls.

  “Pull away, Delia,” he would encourage me.

  How it quickened the pulse when he called me by my first name.

  Yes, we came to share everything after I told him without warning that bitter cold afternoon. “Clyde, listen patiently. I have only my wedding ring now to my name.”